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in my opinion, NOVA should terminate the teacher who taught only tbe holes in evolutionary theory and not the strengths as well. In a science class, especially for first year students, that is unacceptable. A higher level class, once there is a decent amount of understanding of the underlying biology is one thing (and probably a good thing, learning about the holes in a theory is the best wa to really understand it and its limitations.) but not to first years who have no real understanding of biology. Take the example of physics, for instance, there is some dispute about some elements of Einsteinian relativity, I understand (I understand there is some controversy, not what the actual issues are) and this debate is happening where it belongs, among the very few people in the world who actually understand the issues at stake, not in a classroom of introduction to biology at a community college. or any college intro class, for that matter. If the challenges are successful, and our understanding of relativity is altered, then we can start teaching the challenges in intro classes.
I think, and maybe I'm overly cynical here, that the entire 'scientific' basis for Intelligent Design is specious and based solely on the need for attention and promotion. The arguement is that the IDers are held back from promotion in academia, well, that's probably true, if you can't publish anything, you can't get promoted. simple as that. And isn't the discrimination against IDers a convenient excuse for not cutting the mustard? There are thousands of biology professors in the US every year who get passed over for tenure, or full professorships, or whatnot. it's a tough field, one in which you have to produce scientific publications (publish or perish, right?) in reputable journals, no matter what else you do. At my beloved Alma Mater (Colby) tenure track associate professors were expected to publish between one and two peer reviewed papers a year for four to five years, while teaching 2-3 classes a semester. Ideally, you'd throw a book in there as well, if you were a social scientist. And maybe a couple of lectures at conferences, a few letters to editors and a couple of other minor submissions to things. If you didn't hit the benchmarks, no one cared what else you did, you weren't getting tenure. (obviously, the better the paper and the better the journal, the fewer papers you need present.) It's a tough world, fewer than half make it, and those were the top 15 percent to begin with. So what's a better excuse than institutional discrimination against your crackpot theory? It's not my fault, it's the school's for being closed minded.
So you are a young biologist or climatologist who doesn't care as much about science as your career. You have two paths in front of you: one, you can sign on to the generally accepted theories that have mounds of evidence to support them (macroevolution and climate change) knowing that there is intense competition for funding, jobs and research opportunities and that you are going in against giants, knowing by 25 that you are never going to shake the world, unless you get lucky and your tens of thousands of hours of labour leads to a single great discovery that people outside your field care about, basically that you have to be content making small discoveries that add to the larger picture of the world; OR, if you are particularly ambitious, you might notice that there is a lot of funding avaliable for ID research, or Climate Change research that shows no ill effects. So there is money on the table, a spot on Fox News as a contributing science commentator, dozens of easy to get into conferences, a market eager to read your books, fame and fortune are not that hard to come by, if you can stand the ridicule of your peers who know you are full of shit. And the best part? if you never do anything, it's all their fault cause they are small minded and bigoted against your ideas. It's not your fault you can't get tenure, besides, there is a support network to help you out. So you sell your scientific soul.
Let's be clear about one thing. IDers are not 'scientific rebels' that are turning their collective backs on the scientific community while playing to the non-scientific community. Darwin was a rebel, however unwillingly. He stood up to the scientific community and said "you are wrong, and I can prove it" and he stood up to the general public and said "you, too, are wrong, and I can prove that as well) IDers like Behe tell the scientific community "you are wrong, and I can't prove it" and to the great scientifically illiterate masses, "you are right, and those eggheads are wrong" That's not rebellion, that's demagougery. Science, unlike almost anything else is not a matter of opinion, or a popularity contest. It simply is. (or should be)
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